A Crash Course in the Interpretation of Dreams

© 2003 Kurt Leland

Part VII: Dream Dictionary

airplane--something taking off or coming to a conclusion (landing)

bank--your ability to make and/or to save money, self-valuation; bank teller--the dream will tell you something about your level of self-valuation

bridge--transition, crossing over, placing oneself on the other side of an obstacle, or "building a bridge" (making a connection)

boundary--the division between soul and ego, or between physical and nonphysical reality; possible boundaries: stream, wall, fence, mist, curtain

building--belief structure (is it being torn down, restored, or built up?); an office building would refer to beliefs about business; a house would refer to beliefs about your personal life

candles or any other source of light--illumination

car--motivation, often with respect to work, sometimes to life in general

depths, or going downward--shadow's perspective

family--everyone in your family has some outstanding characteristic, something that they're well-known or infamous for, something that people laugh or groan about; thus the appearance in a dream of a family member may be a reference to behavior of your own that in some way resembles that of the family member in question (my brother Carl, for example, is a notorious procrastinator; he appears in my dreams whenever my soul wants me to know that I'm procrastinating)

father--often an image of the soul, as authoritarian, benevolent dictator

fountain, spring--source of life force,

height--soul's perspective

hill--fighting an uphill battle (if the hill is hard to climb); or an attempt to achieve the soul's perspective (view from the top of the hill)

mountain--similar to hill

numbers in dreams (such as an address or age, lottery number, time of day, specific amount of money, etc.)--usually refer to a period of time counted out in hours, days, weeks, or years, or to one's age at the time something that the dream refers to occurred; sometimes several numbers or parts of numbers will need to be added or subtracted from one another to arrive at the meaning (examples: 11:01 P.M. could refer to November 1; apartment # 1225 could refer to a state of being that prevailed, or lessons learned between the ages of 12 and 25; $6.25 could mean "for six years after the age of 25," in other words, 6 + 25); other factors in the dream will usually point toward the dream's subject more clearly, so that numbers end up being one of the dream's confirming factors (a confirming factor is an image or set of images whose function is to corroborate your interpretation of the dream--they'll make sense only in the context of the correct interpretation); often it's best to leave dream numbers for last in the interpretation process; it may be necessary to improvise with them, adding, subtracting, counting backward from the present in hours, days, weeks, months or years, to see if the resulting time periods coincide in any way with the dream's apparent subject matter

ocean--the vastness of the soul (how close are you to it, is it calm or seemingly destructive?)

river--flow of life force; are you going upstream (against the flow) or downstream (with the flow)?

Russia, or a Russian--impatience or haste (rushin' around), unless of course you've been to Russia, or grew up in the generation that was taught that Russia was the enemy, in which case it could represent the shadowy portion of the ego

school--one's lessons

supermarket--an environment in which it's possible to satisfy your (basic) needs; all stores would represent opportunities to satisfy needs in specific areas (but "hardware store" may be a pun, emphasis on something hard, "being in a hard place"--hard where,; software would then be the opposite); checkout line--dream pun for check out; produce department--your productivity

television or movies in dreams--often refer directly to your relationship with the soul (dreams as your own inner TV or movies)

train--train of thought

urination--this could mean that you're "pissed off," but if you're aware of Charles's statement that urination is a means of changing the focus of your consciousness, then urinating in a dream means that you need to change your focus or perspective on, or your awareness (consciousness) of something (See my book Menus for Impulsive Living for more information on this subject )

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